It would be too simplistic to describe Blood as a nihilistic film, though this isn't an untruth. The film oscillates between being plainly morbid and very darkly funny -- in a twisted, alarming way.
Yet in between, neutral to both grim humour and nightmarish realisation, are the moments of creation, of hope, of discovery -- moments of ambition realised, of greatness nurtured with us, so early on from infancy that we imagine we own a share of the spoils.
In the most organic way possible, Anderson also uses oil itself as a metaphor -- for wealth, moral corruption, greed and even ineptitude. Plainview delights in the liquid, embracing and running toward it with fascination. He is awed by the power and the potential of it, and it seems to visibly permeate him, his body, his fingernails, his swarthy skin.
The fliud seems to be dripping from him, in suggestion -- is he made of oil, or vice versa -- even when he sits with a clean white kerchief at a restaurant or struggles, bleary-eyed, with a red-meat breakfast by his bowling alley. You can almost smell it.
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